BNTU President to P.M. Briceno “You Are Holding Our Children Hostage”

News Five has learned that the Public Service Union and the Association of Public Service Senior Managers have joined the Belize National Teachers Union in rejecting the government’s proposed three percent salary increase. Union leaders are expected to formally notify the government of their members’ decision tonight. Meanwhile, tensions are rising. When we spoke with BNTU President Nadia Caliz this afternoon, she didn’t hold back her frustration, especially over Prime Minister John Briceño’s recent comment accusing teachers of “holding students hostage.” Caliz called the remark offensive and out of line.

 

Nadia Caliz, President, Belize National Teachers Union

“I must use this medium to respond to my P.M. According to you brother and I say that with respect, according to you my teachers are holding the students hostage. Honorable Briceno governments, both red and blue have been holding us hostage. You have been sending us into poverty. When we look at our classrooms, we finance those classrooms. We take care of those classrooms. A teacher with an associates degree cannot live a comfortable life here in Belize. I say that because we met on the sixteenth of May 2024. And when you are telling me that our teachers are holding the students hostage, you have been holding these students hostage, you are not providing what you should be providing for them. While we applaud the fact that some of them can now get a meal and my teachers no longer have to take out of their pockets to give them that, my teachers have been suffering because they have been doing a part of your responsibility as a government, providing those resources, repairing those schools. So we at the BNTU don’t take that light. I will say antiart thing, you were willing to give up millions with the Caye Chapel project, millions but holding the students hostage, that project is a part of the whole hostage movement we see going on right now.”